Books for Beginners - what would you recommend?

[Gidders]

As some of you know. I'm quite active in my local camera club, and I'm often asked for recommendations for beginners to improve both thier photographic skills as well as their post processing skills.

As far as improving photographic skills, I think we are talking about: -

• technical stuff like
  • relationships between shutter speed & aperture
  • depth of field
  • shutter speed & moverment
  • shutter speed & camera shake etc
• perspective and choice of lens
• composition
• use of colour
• how to photography different types of event
  • action shots
  • family
  • sporting events
  • landscapes
  • portraits
  • abstract
  • travel
  • still life etc

So what books would you recommend to a beginner who wants to take better pictures?

There are already a number of forum recommendations for Photoshop Books (for Photoshop read PS7, CS, CS2, Elements as appropriate as there are vesions of most of them) which I'll list below (with prices from www.amazon.co.uk) and add some of my own: -

• Photoshop for Dummies by Peter Bauer ~£11
• Adobe Photoshop for Photographers: A Professional Image Editor's Guide by Martin Evening ~£20
• The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby ~£19
• Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop by Bruce Fraser ~19
• PhotoShop in Easy Steps by Robert Shufflebotham ~7

Any other Photoshop recommendations or recommendation for books dealing with other image editing programmes?

[ollieholmes]

I have found 2 books realy usefull myself:
Complete photography manual - Ailsa Mcwhinnie
The new encyclopedia of photography - Edwards.

[Christine]

the first half of Clives post is ,I think the most relevant.The books I have purchased seem to be more intent on giving editing info etc ,whereas,if one takes an image using the correct shutter speeds and apertures etc for the subject in hand,then very little editing should be needed.
I would love to find a book which really would explain the basic techniques and settings.

[Leif]

I would recommend books by John Shaw. They are getting a bit outdated as far as the equipment is concerned, given that they were written in the pre-digital age, but the basics of exposure, aperture, composition, and so on are as well described as anywhere. Leif

[Baycat]

As a begginer myself I can highly reccommend 'The Art Of Photographing Nature' by Martha Hill and Art Wolfe. As the title suggests, this non-technical book deals with the art of producing great wildlife photos and discusses such things as isolating the subject, composition, colour, dof, reading the light.... The book uses side by side comparison of similar photographs to discuss why one photo is superior to the other. This book is a pleasure to read and is packed full of Art Wolfes' beautiful photographs.

[hollis_f]

Two books, both by Bryan Peterson -

Understanding Exposure

Learning to See Creatively

[Gidders]

Thanks all for the recommendions - please keep them comming as I'm sure that they will be of value to Forum members as well as our club members.

Apart form those listed any other Photoshop/Elements recommends, or for other image editing programmes?

not a book, but (a) free (b) pitched right for anyone who knows a bit about both photgraphy and post-processing but wants to go next stage deeper
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm
by an obviously switched on photographer and also including difference in light perception by camera and human and, although assuming photoshop, I still find easy to follow for other progs or Elements 4 + plug-in; nice use of befores/afters using mouse positionioning. Have saved some of the key pages for when away from connection.

[sassan]

Originally Posted by daedal

not a book, but (a) free (b) pitched right for anyone who knows a bit about both photography and post-processing but wants to go next stage deeper

Can't argue with the price.
Also remember the search engines of Google or Yahoo are the first stop for any specific problem or question. Looking at bankrupting book stores and the way our local library disposes off very nice books and magazines s.a. entire National Geography series due to digital availability, makes my nightmare more valid that one of these days, books will all be an antique pieces in hands of collectors only...

Originally Posted by sassan

remember the search engines of Google or Yahoo are the first stop for any specific problem or question.

I did think before putting a specific URL. My experience is that you can thrash about between total geekery and what one already knows (among other things Duncan's very good start-up primers on this forum).

These tutorials are well structured and, as I said deal with light perception, camera optics and digital matters in an integrated manner.

Originally Posted by sassan

Looking at bankrupting book stores and the way our local library disposes off very nice books and magazines s.a. entire National Geography series due to digital availability, makes my nightmare more valid that one of these days, books will all be an antique pieces in hands of collectors only...

The compensation is that one is now able to assemble one's own specialist library quite economically for a particular piece of research using ABE and also dispose of the bookcase overflows - in UK to nearest Amnesty collection point. Farenheit 451 not imminent yet.